The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace eBook

Let others Rhodes or Mytilene
sing,
Or Ephesus, or Corinth, set between
Two seas, or Thebes, or Delphi, for its king
Each famous, or Thessalian Tempe green;
There are who make chaste Pallas’ virgin
tower
The daily burden of unending song,
And search for wreaths the olive’s rifled
bower;
The praise of Juno sounds from many a tongue,
Telling of Argos’ steeds, Mycenaes’s
gold.
For me stern Sparta forges no such spell,
No, nor Larissa’s plain of richest mould,
As bright Albunea echoing from her cell.
O headlong Anio! O Tiburnian groves,
And orchards saturate with shifting streams!
Look how the clear fresh south from heaven removes
The tempest, nor with rain perpetual teems!
You too be wise, my Plancus: life’s
worst cloud
Will melt in air, by mellow wine allay’d,
Dwell you in camps, with glittering banners proud,
Or ’neath your Tibur’s canopy
of shade.
When Teucer fled before his father’s frown
From Salamis, they say his temples deep
He dipp’d in wine, then wreath’d
with poplar crown,
And bade his comrades lay their grief to
sleep:
“Where Fortune bears us, than my sire more
kind,
There let us go, my own, my gallant crew.
’Tis Teucer leads, ’tis Teucer breathes
the wind;
No more despair; Apollo’s word is true.
Another Salamis in kindlier air
Shall yet arise. Hearts, that have borne
with me
Worse buffets! drown to-day in wine your care;
To-morrow we recross the wide, wide sea!”

VIII.

Lydia, DIC peromnes.

Lydia, by all above,
Why bear so hard on Sybaris, to ruin him with
love?
What change has made him shun
The playing-ground, who once so well could bear
the dust and sun?
Why does he never sit
On horseback in his company, nor with uneven
bit
His Gallic courser tame?
Why dreads he yellow Tiber, as ’twould
sully that fair frame?
Like poison loathes the oil,
His arms no longer black and blue with honourable
toil,
He who erewhile was known
For quoit or javelin oft and oft beyond the limit
thrown?
Why skulks he, as they say
Did Thetis’ son before the dawn of Ilion’s
fatal day,
For fear the manly dress
Should fling him into danger’s arms, amid
the Lycian press?

IX.

VidesutAlta.

See, how it stands,
one pile of snow,
Soracte!
’neath the pressure yield
Its groaning woods;
the torrents’ flow
With clear
sharp ice is all congeal’d.
Heap high the logs,
and melt the cold,
Good Thaliarch;
draw the wine we ask,
That mellower vintage,
four-year-old,
From out
the cellar’d Sabine cask.
The future trust with
Jove; when He
Has still’d
the warring tempests’ roar
On the vex’d deep,